We kickoff this episode as a continuation of our August 22nd discussion, and launch into this topic by talking about Cattail as an example of an innovation that people have started to use for business purposes, yet doing so without being aware that it was only intended for research purposes. Luis recently delivered a presentation to the IBM knowledge management community, demonstrating how to use Cattail. During the presentation, the creator of Cattail, Jonathan Feinberg, was answering questions in the back channel chat and on the phone.

(note – Jonathan, by the way, is the creator of Wordle, the thing that creates those images we’ve been using here).

Getting access to a new technology is great. But what happens when people want full production support for the new tool and it’s not supported? The innovator often isn’t ready or willing to provide the level of support necessary to use the new invention for business purposes. It’s a real problem when end users think that inventions are supported in full production when they really are not. It puts a lot of pressure on the invention team and the full production team. And the end users don’t get what they expect and often get frustrated and confused.

Should everyone already know that they should not trust the innovation to retain their data? Does everyone automatically know that they must keep a local backup? Is there anything to be concerned about while we encourage people to adopt new technology? Should we assume that everyone knows how to take care of themselves? Who’s responsibility is it to protect the early adopter? Should the power users do it? Should the system do it? Or, should the enterprise do it? Here are the big questions that the CIO organization has relative to innovation.

What is the relationship between the innovation team and the full production team? Where is innovation happening, inside or outside of the enterprise? And what is an enterprise willing to do to access it? Must they reinvent or redeploy?

The adoption of certain functionality and capability cannot be stopped, no matter what. Certain things are inevitable among effective knowledge workers.

Michael Hickson seems to have an enterprise complex. He doesn’t like the idea of IBM micro-blogging behind it’s firewall. In his blog, E-piphanies, he writes a rather harsh slur in gossip-column style stating that this is a bad idea.

Keep Silly Walking :-)

In my own personal opinion… sometimes you have to wiggle your arms and legs around a little bit before you discover a new dance.

So, Michael, you are surprised to discover that IBM has been using micro-blogging behind the firewall? You want to couch this as a sensational critique? Common!

The world’s 14-year leader in number of patents didn’t get that way by NOT engaging in everything new. There are lots of things behind the firewall with which early adopters are having a blast: blogs, wikis, podcasts, broadcasts, micro-blogging, tagging, social photo sharing, social video sharing, social file sharing, IM for over a decade now, online communities, 3D internet / virtual reality, online friends & connections, rating & reputation systems… there are over 100 innovations available within our early adoption program. The list goes on. We don’t gate our innovations. We promote them!

Do you think that each of these innovations are perfect before we try them? Well, that’s not the way it goes. It’s survival of the fittest.

In Case You Forgot How

We have about 400,000 people inside our firewall to try this stuff out and give us feedback. Before we roll something into full production, and before we send it down the product development path, we tap into that feedback and learn as much as we can about the new creation. It makes the final solution stronger.

And guess what… We need these tools. The workforce has changed. The standard for the online social interaction experience is set across the internet. The corporation that doesn’t embrace this functionality will be the corporation that doesn’t stand the test of time. In case you haven’t noticed, IBM is Built to Last.

None of that would be possible if it weren’t for our willingness to embrace new things. Don’t damn IBM for that. Congratulate us. Applaud us. Follow our lead, because it’s very very successful. Over $90 billion a year is no accident.